Pets at Home Complete Nutrition Puppy Pate: Variety Selection review

Our Average band is where this one settles, a fair distance under the Excellent band the typical wet puppy food occupies. It reads better in places than that position suggests. Protein and processing comes out Good and nutritional balance Outstanding, helped by a 60% animal declaration and a dry matter protein figure most trays would be glad of. Transparency still reads Excellent, since what the label does declare it declares plainly, and the sugar line is the one entry doing it no favours.

Ingredients, as declared: With Chicken: Meat and Animal Derivatives (60% including 4% Chicken), Minerals, Oils and Fats, Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.1% Chicory). With Beef: Meat and Animal Derivatives (60% including 4% Beef), Minerals, Oils and Fats, Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.1% Chicory).With Lamb: Meat and Animal Derivatives (60% including 4% Lamb), Minerals, Oils and Fats, Various Sugars, Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (0.1% Chicory).

The animal declaration runs to 60% of the recipe, which is a generous share by tray standards, and 4% of it is named as chicken, beef or lamb according to the loaf. That leaves most of the animal content described by category alone. The share is real and the protein figure backs it up, but the naming is where this label stops short.

Not one cereal appears on the ingredients list, and that is unusual on a tray written this much in category terms. Grain free is still not a claim we would make on your behalf. Derivatives of vegetable origin sits there covering plant material of an unstated kind, and only the 0.1% chicory inside it is pinned down.

That chicory is a nice small touch. Chicory root brings inulin, a soluble fibre the good gut bacteria feed on. Even at a tenth of a percent, it looks like a considered inclusion and not a decoration.

Various sugars sits alongside it, added for taste. Wet foods lean on sugar because it works, and on a food built for growth we would rather see it left out.

Where this label does best is the analysis. Protein of 10.0% converts to 50.0% of dry matter and fat of 6.0% to 30.0%. The carbohydrate estimate is just 8.0% of dry matter, where a wet puppy food typically runs 13.6%. Energy comes in at 97 kcal per 100g, near enough the 106 typical.

Calcium converts to 1.50% of dry matter, sitting inside what large breed growth is planned around, which matters because the pack offers the food from toy through to large breed. Ash at 10.0% of dry matter says the mineral load is real rather than nominal. The added panel is the thin part, with vitamin D3 at 140IU and four trace elements covering zinc, manganese, copper and iodine.

£2.61 a kilo, sold as 12 x 150g trays.

Portions on a growth food never hold still for long. Work from the feeding guide for your pup's weight this week, and check it against how they are filling out. A set number of trays soon stops fitting.